Lou Pickney's Online Commentary
Wrestling Society X
Tuesday
February 13, 2007
Tonight MTV aired the third week of its new Wrestling Society X show. And, despite a 30 minute time slot, crazy cuts to the crowd mid-match, zero selling, a lack of character development, and a ring announcer who is apparently paid by the decibel... it has become, for me, the most consistently entertaining wrestling program on American television.
There's really no reason that this should be the case. World Wrestling Entertainment has five hours of TV per week (not counting scrub shows like Sunday Night Heat), three of which are live, and a roster with some of the most talented workers in North America.
Unfortunately, WWE has one way of doing things: Vince McMahon's way. Wrestling itself is frowned upon, wrestlers are punished if their matches are "too good" (based on the ridiculous concept of not showing up guys higher up on the card), it's punch punch kick kick resthold, and a push based often more on the "look" (skin stretched over cinder block) than the ability to put on an entertaining match.
TNA should be the promotion filling the void of good wrestling, but since Vince Russo returned, the promotion has gone down the shitter. Three minute TV matches, run-ins galore, angles that make no sense, etc. Vince Russo has no place booking pro wrestling. Not now, not ever.
What has happened under Russo? The X Division, generally made up of lighter weight wrestlers who can put on great matches, has been a burial ground. Angles are hot-shot again and again, and a thousand things are thrown against the wall in the course of a one hour Spike TV show, to the point where you don't remember any of what you saw when it's over. And then you have booking like on Sunday night's PPV, where A.J. Styles was put in a gimmick match that limited his potential, Samoa Joe didn't wrestle, and Christopher Daniels didn't even appear on the show.
I don't blame the workers in either promotion -- they have a job to do, and like you or I or anyone, they have to do what the boss says or face negative consequences.
Now there's Wrestling Society X, a mash-up of fast-paced matches with heavy editing and a definite MTV frenetic pace. For the most part, guys on the show are unknowns, and with only 30 minutes, there's not time for much as far as vignettes or interviews go. Perhaps that's a good thing; one sketch this week was so bad it was amusing.
The high-risk moves that the guys pull off are amazing. Corkscrew planchas, springboard Asai moonsaults, shooting star legdrops, you name it. Detractors call these matches "spotfests", with little ring psychology, almost no selling of moves, and a sense that it's one high risk move into another. And I have to agree: these complaints are valid.
Yet, despite its flaws, Wrestling Society X is an entertaining show. In just its third week it has become appointment television for me. Keep in mind that I never watch MTV; I may be in the 18-34, 18-49, and 25-54 demos (yes, I span them all) but typically if I watch MTV for any length of time, I feel old.
You know how older adults can't understand the appeal of new music? It's like that for me with MTV's programming; the past two incarnations of it (think 2-3 years per reinvention of itself) baffled me more and more, and what's on now makes me feel completely out of touch. But WSX brings me to the channel, and I have the feeling that I'm not alone on this.
To be sure, WSX has its negatives and annoyances, but at the end of the show I feel like I've been entertained and I look forward to seeing next week's show. That never happens anymore with the other pro wrestling programs on American TV.
RAW is a two hour weekly Vince McMahon ego trip. SmackDown! has some good workers, but they are kept from being able to shine in the ring because of the WWE way. ECW is an embarrassment to the old Extreme Championship Wrestling. I flipped over to the show tonight during a WSX commercial break, and a C.M. Punk match was on. Punk is talented, but unfortunately the WWE chokeout has been put on him, and he was stuck in a long resthold against Mike Knox (one of McMahon's huge muscle stiffs who can't work.) You can't go from seeing springboard planchas to watching Mike Knox lumbering in the ring.
WWE talks about entertainment, but for my money, it fails to entertain in five hours a week the way that WSX does in a half hour, and those WSX shows have been in the can since November. It only has seven more weeks to go, but hopefully MTV will give the promotion another run... and maybe a larger timeslot. We can hope.
One non-wrestling item: this afternoon I was reading some sports news when the AccuWeather extension that my bro Matt put on my Firefox browser popped up a Severe Weather Alert. Curious, I clicked on it... for it to reveal this to me (and no, you can't click on any of it -- this is a .jpg image:)
Hmm, a tornado warning. I turned on the TV (turning off Sirius) and flipped between NBC, FOX, and a surprisingly good performance by ABC 33/40. It was iffy there for awhile, and at one point there was a spinning circle on the TV weather map right above Alabaster, indicating the mild presence of rotating clouds.
Luckily, because the sun had set, the hot air that had fueled the severe weather cooled down, preventing any funnel clouds from hitting here. And to think that I'd thought that I left my storm dodging days back in Tampa...
|
